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Date: Mon, 21 Dec 1998 17:14:04 -0500
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Subject: Wigger on Hirrel, _Children of Wrath_
H-NET BOOK REVIEW
Published by [log in to unmask] (December, 1998)
Leo P. Hirrel. _Children of Wrath: New School Calvinism and
Antebellum Reform_. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky,
1998. x + 248 pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, and
index. $39.95 (cloth), ISBN 0-8131-2061-6.
Reviewed for H-SHEAR by John Wigger
<[log in to unmask]>, University of Missouri-Columbia.
The Empire Strikes Back
In _Children of Wrath_, Leo P. Hirrel has given us a tightly
reasoned exploration of the influence of New School Calvinism on
antebellum reform. He is of course not the first to write about the
connection between religion and reform, but he does so in a way that
helps to clarify the religious motivations of some of the most
influential antebellum reformers. While the trend in recent
scholarship has been to suggest that Calvinism faded into obscurity
after the American Revolution, Hirrel argues that this just wasn't
so, at least for a modified version of Calvinism.
One of the most influential books ever written about American
religion is Timothy Smith's _Revivalism and Social Reform: American
Protestantism on the Eve of the Civil War_, published in 1957.
Smith's central thesis is that the "Arminian" revivalism and
perfectionism that "flourished increasingly between 1840 and 1865"
led America's leading denominations to become increasingly involved
in social reform. These revivalistic religious groups, particularly
the Methodists, Baptists, and New School Presbyterians, led the way
in the crusade to reform America, playing "a key role in the
widespread attack upon slavery, poverty, and greed."[1] While
Smith's argument was influential in its time, many who came after
him interpreted antebellum reform far differently. Later
interpreters often made a good deal less of the religious
convictions of the reformers, choosing instead to highlight economic
and materialistic considerations.
But this may now be changing. Over the past decade or so, a number
of works have appeared emphasizing the strength and importance of
religion, especially popular religion, in the lives of antebellum
Americans. Books by Nathan Hatch, Jon Butler, and Paul Johnson and
Sean Wilentz have been among the more important works dealing with
the growing influence of religion in the early republic.[2] More
specifically, a number of works have recently appeared reevaluating
the connection between religion and reform. Along with _Children of
Wrath_, these include Robert Abzug's _Cosmos Crumbling: American
Reform and the Religious Imagination_.[3] While Abzug and Hirrel
share many of the same concerns, they approach their topics quite
differently.
_Children of Wrath_ is divided into two parts with five chapters
each. In the first part, Hirrel explains the development of New
School Calvinism following the Revolution. The story he tells here
is one of theological adaptation, as Calvinist theologians "began
making 'improvements' on traditional theology in order to make
Calvinism more acceptable to their audiences" (p. 18). In Chapter
One Hirrel discusses some of the earliest attempts to reinvigorate
Calvinism. Among the first of these reformulations was Samuel
Hopkins's "New Divinity," also known as "Hopkinsianism." Largely a
response to Deism and rationalistic thinking, Hirrel argues that New
Divinity was more optimistic than previous Calvinism. Though God
still damned sinners, he would do so far less often as the
millennium approached. Hopkins's colleague Joseph Bellamy actually
calculated that "at least 17,456 souls would be saved for every one
lost" by the end of the millennium (p. 20)!
Chapter Two turns to the development, beginning in the 1820s, of New
School Calvinism, or New Haven theology, as it was also known. The
idea that "reformed theology was completely compatible with human
standards of reason, morality, and justice" was a foundational
concept of New School theology (p. 28). This, as Hirrel points
out, represented a significant shift away from the traditional
Calvinist emphasis on God's sovereignty and humanity's dependence.
Chapter Three compares the differences between Princeton Seminary
and Oberlin College. While Oberlin, largely under the influence of
Charles Finney, effectively repudiated Calvinism, Princeton
established a reputation for defending Calvinist orthodoxy. Oberlin
and Princeton represented radical and conservative challenges to New
School thinking, but in the end Hirrel implies that neither was as
important as is generally assumed.
Chapter Four discusses the relationship between antebellum
Congregationalists and Presbyterians with regard to New School
theology. It is here that Hirrel gives short biographies of the six
New School leaders who provide much of the primary sources that
undergird this study: Nathaniel William Taylor, Lyman Beecher,
Albert Barnes, George B. Cheever, George Duffield, and Moses Stuart.
Under their leadership, New School Congregationalists and
Presbyterians pulled together to face the challenge of Methodist and
Baptist growth. Chapter Five continues this theme of the New School
response to the changing religious environment of the early
republic. As Hirrel points out, the New Schoolers were well aware
of the challenges they faced and worked to accommodate to the tenor
of the times. They believed that the United States had a special
divine mission, and that their ideas would play an important part in
fulfilling that destiny.
Having established the theological vision of New School Calvinism in
part one, part two turns to how these ideas shaped the way that New
Schoolers looked at reform. Hirrel looks at four reform movements:
anti-Catholicism, temperance, antislavery, and the work of six major
benevolent societies. Chapter Six deals with anti-Catholicism. I
suspect that more than a few readers will balk at including
anti-Catholicism as a reform movement. But Hirrel argues that the
New School Calvinists he is looking at saw it as such, treating it
exactly as they treated other reform activities, for exactly the
same reasons. While we would not see anti-Catholicism as a reform,
they "applied an entirely different frame of reference" (p. 184).
These reformers conceived of their opposition to Catholicism as "an
expression of disinterested benevolence" (p. 93). Hirrel argues
that New Schoolers were "primarily concerned with the religious
aspects of anti-Catholicism" (p. 95). "Their emphasis on human
depravity led them to contend that the Catholic Church promised
salvation without reform to unregenerate humans" (p. 101). Hence,
until Catholicism could be overthrown, true reform was not possible
among the growing Catholic portion of the population. Though
primarily a religious problem, Catholicism inevitably posed
political and social dangers in the eyes of these reformers. The
anti-Catholicism of the New Schoolers is noteworthy, argues Hirrel,
because it "conformed so closely to the logic of their theology and
philosophy" (p. 115).
Chapter Seven looks at the New School contribution to the temperance
crusade. Here again, Hirrel argues that it was the religious
convictions of these reformers that motivated their involvement in
temperance reform and that pushed them toward the more radical
margins of the movement. New Schoolers were among those calling for
total abstinence. "Believing that moral truths were fixed and
immutable," writes Hirrel, "New Haven adherents were unwilling to
accept the idea that alcohol could be acceptable under some
circumstances and unacceptable under others" (p. 117). Hence, some
New School reformers adopted the "two-wine theory," arguing that the
"good" wines in the Bible actually contained no alcohol. Chapter
Eight discusses the New School's involvement in antislavery reform.
Though few New School reformers became radical abolitionists, they
did increasingly come to see slavery as a great moral evil. Hirrel
argues that Harriet Beecher Stowe's _Uncle Tom's Cabin_ is very much
a product of this New School thinking about slavery.
Chapter Nine focuses on the involvement of New School reformers in
seven benevolent organizations--the American Bible Society, the
American Sunday School Union, the American Tract Society, the
American Education Society, the American Home Missionary Society,
the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, and the
New York Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor.
"Believing in the viciousness of the non-Christian population,"
these organizations "focused their energies on bringing the Gospel
to the unenlightened. Their assurance of an objectively valid truth
inspired them to apply their own religious principles
universally...they did not perceive a need to restructure the
economic or social organization of Northern society, for they
believed that society could be improved through the promotion of
true religion" (p. 169). Finally, Chapter Ten deals with the
decline of New School reform, beginning with the Presbyterian schism
of 1837. While New School Presbyterians became increasingly more
conservative, Congregationalists became in general more liberal. By
the 1850s, New School Calvinists were fairly isolated.
_Children of Wrath_ is cogently organized, well researched, and,
within its self-imposed limits, convincingly argued. It represents
a significant refinement of our understanding of antebellum reform.
Hirrel turns aside from debates over whether reformers were
displaced elites seeking social control, post-Calvinist optimists,
or precursors to modern liberalism to forge a new understanding of
the religious motivations of a small but important group of
antebellum reformers.
Hirrel is convincing when he argues that New School theology lay
behind the thinking of the reformers he deals with. In this sense,
Hirrel perhaps has a deeper appreciation for the ins and outs of New
Haven theology than does Robert Abzug. But Abzug's is a far more
expansive vision of the connection between religion and reform.
Abzug describes Lyman Beecher, for example, as someone who
"audaciously reconceived the cosmos," rather than as a devotee of
New Haven theology.[4] For Abzug, as for Timothy Smith, Beecher is
an evangelical rather than a Calvinist. The difference is
significant. At work here is what J.H. Hexter once referred to as
the difference between "lumpers" and "splitters." Lumpers are
those historians who look for sweeping trends and broad connections.
Splitters are more interested in resifting the evidence of seemingly
familiar topics to find new angles of interpretation. Of course,
like all generalizations, this one quickly breaks down. No one is
strictly a lumper or a splitter. But there is a grain of truth to
the characterization.. In this case, I think that Abzug and Smith
might be seen as lumpers, while Hirrel is more of a splitter.
While Hirrel is clearly aware of the limits of his study, he argues
that New School Calvinists exerted an influence beyond their
numbers, primarily through their leadership of reform organizations.
He also downplays charges from liberals (Finney and his followers)
and conservatives (Charles Hodge and like-minded orthodox Calvinists
at Princeton Seminary) that New School Calvinism was not really
Calvinism at all. Timothy Smith happily accepted this charge,
thereby lumping together New School Calvinists with the Methodists
and Baptists. Like Abzug, Smith addresses a much broader vision of
reform than does Hirrel. Smith's disregard for the particulars of
New School Calvinism allows him to include New School reformers in
his story. Here Hirrel is probably closer to the truth for the
small group of reformers he examines. But I wonder to what degree
most "New School" Presbyterians and Congregationalists (the
proverbial person in the pew) fully understood and embraced New
Haven theology? In other words, how far beyond the small group of
leaders that Hirrel focuses on did New School reform extend as a
distinct and coherent system, particularly after 1837? Are there
clear correlations between social standing and involvement in New
School reform? How actively did women support New School reforms?
Here, more attention to rank and file New School adherents
(including those farther down the socioeconomic scale) would have
been helpful. Also helpful would have been more discussion of how
New School reformers differed from, and interacted with, other
antebellum reformers. Some readers may also object to the limited
number of reforms that Hirrel considers. In short, while Hirrel has
done some admirable splitting, he leaves me wanting more lumping.
That _Children of Wrath_ left me with these kinds of questions is
not much of a complaint. Good books always leave readers wanting
more. _Children of Wrath_ represents a significant contribution to
our understanding of antebellum religion and reform. Hirrel has
succeeded in showing that New School Calvinism was a primary
motivating force for a number of leading antebellum reformers.
Notes
[1]. Timothy L. Smith, _Revivalism and Social Reform: American
Protestants on the Eve of the Civil War_ (Nashville: Abingdon
Press, 1957; reprint, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980), 8.
[2]. Nathan O. Hatch, _The Democratization of American
Christianity_ (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1989);
Jon Butler, _Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American
People_ (Cambridge, Mass. and London: Harvard University Press,
1990); Paul E. Johnson and Sean Wilentz, _The Kingdom of Matthias_
(New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994). Also see
Paul E. Johnson, _A Shopkeepers Millennium: Society and Revivals in
Rochester, New York, 1815-1837_ (New York: Hill and Wang, 1978).
[3]. Robert H. Abzug, _Cosmos Crumbling: American Reform and the
Religious Imagination_ (New York and Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1994).
[4]. Abzug, _Cosmos Crumbling_, 38.
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